Philippe Gamache 0:00 Yo Philippe Gamache 0:07 what's up guys, welcome to the humans of martec podcast. His name is John Taylor. My name is Phil ganache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing What's up everyone today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Mauro Figueiredo, a global digital transformation and martec leader. Mario spent the first six years of his career focusing on CRM and marketing automation for various gambling and casino companies across the UK as well as Malta. He worked as a CRM manager at Sony Computer Entertainment focused on growing PlayStation game launches including Uncharted four, Playstation VR, and several live events as well. He later had a short advisory stint as a business aviation company and a booking marketplace startup. He then joined Europe's largest gaming publisher Gameforge as their head of CRM, where he led multi channel campaigns that spanned across 400 million plus users. He then made the mega move to JP Morgan Chase as executive director of CRM, where he built the CRM department from the ground up. And most recently, he's moved over to APAC, Vietnam to be director of martec and Center of Excellence at a regional financial institution. Mauro thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Mauro 1:30 Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Phil. And hello everyone. listening today, Philippe Gamache 1:35 this episode is brought to you by our friends at knack. launching an email or landing page in your marketing automation platform shouldn't feel like assembling an airplane midflight with no instructions. But too often. That's exactly how it feels. Knack is like an instruction set for campaign creation for establishing brand guardrails and streamlining your approval process to knacks no code, drag and drop editor to help you build emails and landing pages. No more having to stop midway through your campaign to fix something simple Knack lets you work with your entire team in real time and stops you having to fix things mid flight. Check them out@naqt.com That's kn a K. And tell them we sent you. Yeah, no, thanks, sir. Thanks for your time. I know it's late. In Vietnam, it's early morning for us. So yeah, especially thankful for you making time for this. I want to start by asking you about building winning martec teams, I know that you've had the opportunity to build a bunch of different teams at different sizes and different maturity stages. For companies, like enterprise teams like JP Morgan, I'd love for you to walk us through maybe like your framework for how do you structure this ideal martec team? Mauro 2:55 Yeah, so I have a, a framework, my approach tends to be different on on the size of the company on the team itself, the maturity of the team. But my my approach tends to go into building a team, it really focusing in understanding the scope of the project, what is the scope of the project, that we have one or two technologies that we'll need actually to bring in to deliver that business value Business Challenge, once I have that clear idea, then is thinking about who is less fitted for, for for that Montek team from a hard skill in a sense of what actually just ESS they need. From a someone very technological, really customer obsessed technology obsessed experience obsess so that you combine different right and left brain people, but most importantly, is the attitude or characteristics the person would have, in a sense, when we go through a mall type project, you have the discovery phase RFP, you and then you've got your your defining and then you also have your implementation, you sometimes can drag and think things change, right? So it's key to blank people will have the personality to switch on to different types of world. Now I'm defining things after I have discovered it. Now I need to implement it now some can change. So for my experiences is finding someone well rounded up that is willing to go through multiple changes, be resilient enough to be able to cope with any type of changes. Although the scope sometimes is fix, as you know, a few things might change the industry might change and that might come in and you might need to repurpose everything you've done. So having this type of mentality at times who are winning my tech team. It's even more crucial. Sometimes then Then the skill set itself, right? Because changes can be quite frustrating in general as human beings. So, so yeah, that's kind of my, my, my approach is really looking at a squirrel project, what I need to do, and then looking at how it skill sets, but then also looking at the soft skills and personalities that I need to build up plenty. Jon Taylor 5:22 So when you're building just to build off that question, and that answer, when you're building out these martide teams and thinking about, like spotting the next future Mark tech superstar, I know you've built several teams, and you've had a lot of luck here. Give us some insight into the types of questions that you ask. I know, a lot of our listeners are probably, you know, in their career thinking about, hey, what's going to happen when I go to interview for my next big position? What types of questions are people going to ask me? And what are they looking for out of those? Those questions? Mauro 5:52 Yeah, so I can tell you about me and I know differently, there's actually three different aspects, right? So I focused a lot of course, your CV experiences focus on your EQ, right, your, your IQ, sorry, which is really your career, what do you have done. So it's really about being able to demonstrate not just through the CD, but really the process, the situation, the task, the results and the actions you drove? Right? So kind of like the Star model, Situation, Task, Action, and results. So following that, that that process, it's really key to be able to provide examples of how you contributed how you collaborate with team. But some of the questions I really like to ask focusing on seeing that are vetted all the professional skills, company history, I know the person who's talking about why the trigger, and then I start focusing on emotional intelligence, right? And the two questions I actually enjoy asking. And I think it's sometimes it comes as a surprise to some is I asked how do you describe yourself, provide me with four words or objectives on how you these privacy? And then tell me how and why. And then people start thinking, they give me sometimes free sometimes to maybe their name, so they can go in? And then I said, Okay, fair enough. Good. But this is like, institutional conversation. So now you describe yourself, this is a display themselves. 123. So now tell me how do your friends describe yourself? Right. And then again, they think about it sometimes becomes easier when they friend. So this allows me to see how the person perceives themselves, and how they think that world perceives them. And then it's time to do some correlations in that. And I really try to tune in number one into their personality, their motivations, and as well allows me the time to get to know him as well and have some follow up questions. I'm sure. We have. I had other questions was if there's a pile now, right. And you will have to leave the building? What is the item? The only item you need to take? Right? Put the person in spot. So those are the questions I kind of like to us. Philippe Gamache 8:16 Those are fun questions like refreshing from the What's What's your greatest strength through your your biggest weaknesses? I think it's a different take on that. But it would it would also surprise me like, how would you describe yourself? And then how would your friends describe you? It's good interview question they keep in your back pocket sick. Yeah. I'm not sure off the cuff. Like, how I would answer that. And I don't know if like the off the cuff answer. Reflecting on it would be like, gosh, yeah, like, I forgot to mention this and mentioned that, but yeah, I like I like the questions. Mauro 8:48 It's very personal. Jon Taylor 8:52 One of the four words that I think a lot of people in marketing operations at Mar tech, would want to have, I guess, based on some of the interviews we've had in the past on this show, is the word curiosity. Like I feel like this is such a common thread that comes up in all of our interviews, talking with marketing, operations leaders, martec, leaders and so on. What's your take on curiosity? And how do you demonstrate this in the hiring process? And how do you kind of when you're when you're hiring, how do you find out if people are curious before they take the job? Because as you mentioned, like, things are constantly changing. I think the curiosity, at least my opinion, is one of those traits that kind of can help you surf all of the changes as it's happening. Mauro 9:36 Yeah, I really enjoy that, that that aspect of curiosity I feel in our profession. It's definitely something that I need, right? We need to be curious about of what's coming next what the customer wants, what the client wants, right what our business attendant wants. So the way I could translate this it is the The following way in terms of showing curiosity coming into view, one would be, go above and beyond. If you can find a young, what's funny internet about the company, try to find a connection of the connection, perhaps Dan is late to company, try to link to someone that from that company that doesn't mind maybe having a 50 this chat because you trust an interview and you bump into about that. So you curious, even try to find, oh, I found this role at this company, the hiring manager is so and so on. Would you mind having a chat understanding about the tea, so then when you come in, and you are speaking with your interviewer, you already have a lot of information that the person is not even thinking about that you will have because that's not accessible cleaning. Lets you have this guy's this guy really wants to get to now is inside is few steps ahead. Right. So this is one way of showing curiosity about the role about the person and wanting to do so I think he's type of forward thinking, curiosity, in the sense of going in investigating, it's really good as well as asking questions, right? Ask, asking questions that normally, very little would not ask. And you will feel that once you will. But it's really about I say something, and then you follow up your is in finding out why the logic behind it, I chose the thought process. And this is really something that in our in our realm of what we do, it's really important to have that thought process to understand from A to B, and then you start branching out. So showing, asking these questions. So for me that will check in Yes. Philippe Gamache 11:52 Yeah, I love that answer. I think those are they're good tips on? Yeah, like second level degree connection, even first, if that's even better, just like, Hey, Kim, interviewing at this company, can I pick your brain about this? I also like to during interviews expand on this idea of curiosity for like the practice itself, like, how are you keeping up with Mark tech? What are the blogs, the newsletters, the podcast that you're like, subscribe to that you're listening to? Like, how are you staying up to stuff and I've gotten a lot of interview candidates that are just like, oh, I don't really read books, I don't like podcasts. But I learned like on the job and blah, blah, blah. And then there's like some candidates that are just listing off like a ton of resources. And they have like two mentors that they proactively reached out to. So you can like easily separate to folks that are hungry and curious, right? So I love the love the advice there. I wanted to ask you about, like the profession of when you're going into the interview for some of these roles. I was chatting with a listener recently of the show who was currently on the hunt for a director of marketing operations role. One company he was interviewing with was looking at, I wouldn't qualify this as a unicorn. But it's an interesting kind of mix of the two. So the role was like director of marketing operations, but they were looking for this director to own both martech and analytics. And in like big companies, those are usually like two separate roles, oftentimes, like two separate departments would be like a data team. And then the martec team, the data team does like multi touch attribution, like analysts, like all the analysis, like the dashboarding, the pipeline stuff, and the martech. Folks are building out integrations and change management and like teaching how to use the tool and all that stuff. But so for this company, they're hoping this director of moths person to be doing the to and this wasn't a startup because like typically, in a startup, you know, this person is wearing both hats. This was like a 200 person plus company. And usually you would find those into two different teams. So I'm curious, what advice would you have for people who are looking to specialize in a sub area of marketing apps like analytics, or martec? And like, how do you feel about these, like opposing forces, forces of employers who are looking to consolidate all of these functions into a single person? Mauro 14:26 Yeah, that's a very interesting question. And this is something I've seen currently very becoming a big trend, right, where employers are trying to amalgamate functions, right, we're moving into this space where the employers expect more with less so this is exactly a nice example of putting two functions then we'll see pop together under the packs. And I've heard these has its own positives and negatives. For someone very senior, there is definitely an additive at times when you are less a challenge, rather, because once you specialize in an area you want to build on on that strength rather than spreading out, because that's where you're wrong. And maybe you have a team that is specialized on that area, on the other embassy. And for me, someone starting out or in that middle for a jump, and has been generalist, it's actually good to really depends, first of all, on that perspective, but my advice would be that most of most of us, or if there's been a time where I thought of as a, I'm going to call it like an M shape, which means I have very verticals of expertise across multiple areas, but then the the economy has changed this and I you have to be a T shape, we have a house from knowledge, and one specific area and enroll range in one area. So we coming back to this M shape expertise, again, and one I would like to see in these types of let's say Mr. And Mrs have arose from the employers is that also the remuneration, right? The package offered to those go into it should be equal to, to that specific, eight precepts code, right for the same person will check points is not but it will be nice. So what I would actually then say for someone looking into specialize in those areas, is first really understand the foundations and the basic principles of what they want to do. They should seek field professionals already doing it. Again, I'll focus on second degree connections, why do we need those routes? And we understand some of the ones who actually do it, how are they do and be part of those communities? And also, whilst in that process, if you said, okay, my skill is more into one on kinematics, content, be quite clear, and then find out the expectations right. And then we said okay, normally those skills come talk, this is the best that I could do. But but then you can set up a plan or learning one of learning about those on the parts that you might not know. And then during this speaking with communities getting certifications, it means it will help out and I think there needs to be a a growth mindset. And nowadays, I think that answers marketeers, we actually need to know, and specialize in neurological areas, again, like before, but this is this is the not that the nowadays challenge. And I think also, we should push back a times with the employees, decoys, it's the value you get from the person focusing on one thing that they really know and focus, it's much greater than spread person. Maybe the person in the beginning can do that. But then build up a team that needs support, and maximize. That's my advice on different parts, but that that will be really the best recommendation I'll meet someone new study. And industry. Jon Taylor 18:17 It's a it's actually a nice segue into the next question that I have for you around AI adoption. And we're seeing this notion of CO pilots for everything right now in marketing. So like, this idea that you have specialists and generalists like now you're starting to augment with AI, like you can have a generalist who has now an AI specialist in web analytics, or in CDP's, or whatever. I'm curious, around your take on this, like, how is the adoption of AI going to change the makeup of marketing teams? How is it going to change the way that people skill themselves up in this new era? What is the role of AI copilots in marketing? Mauro 18:57 I think that that's really the hot question. And it's a topic I'm really passionately talking about. But I think AI and those four pilots are definitely they should be human partners, right? Is it port collaboration as the name of the call pilot? I think as humans, we should be in the driving seat and then utilize the the machines to support us. What is my my view on this? There are two two things, right? We know that. That utilizing those tools is really beneficial. And it's been at times really enhancing productivity for more than 40% In some industries. We know that this industry, by 2020 30 is poised to bring him out 15 trillion US dollars and Gen AI on its own is supposed to bring about 4.4 trillion US A trillion in specific use cases and 75% of that value the for for the for, for you will come all be realized from the marketing and sales functions and Chanute. Right. So there's a lot of things to do. So it's a key, it's a key area, but what we really need to understand in marketing that will be different and new ways of working. And I have this view of either will be to upskill and bring those skills a to the current or traditional roles, or the traditional roles needs to change, for example, we could have, I like to imagine this an AI strategist. So that will be in your role, that you have a strategist looking at all the different types of AI journey, activity within a company, and understands the patch to a customer. Right, so it's kind of a global role throughout the company understands that patch points, and how, then you could have an AI carpet generated person, which links the human and the machine, and really understands the perks of that, and really looking on how to safeguard brands. So I have a view of either we will have coop skillets, what we will have to action, we must actually because this technology is here, it's not going anywhere. And I think many of us are utilizing you know, daily basis. And I think it will help with maximizing our mundane tasks, really, and we can focus on what's important, which is our human skills that we can amplify it. So so this is kind of my current view of either we bring you down into the new those skill sets into the new roles, or create completely new roles. And it's depend exactly on the on how companies need to need to, to create themselves. So this is what I've kind of tried to call like, the new renaissance of a workplace. Where before, like, you will commission a painting and now we commissioned it from an AI perspective, but when you master it, and it takes him back to your generic list and generalist and specified or specific persons doing one task, I think with all these AI hallucinations and things that happen at times, we need to know at least enough of the subject to be able to to be able to or can I say to be able to make a an informed judgment, right? So well at least know the basics because otherwise, if we just listen to the machine at this age, and it can make mistakes, you can have big impacts. So I'm always on this view of we shouldn't have and use the machine when has Yeah, rather than more than Philippe Gamache 23:12 Yeah, we've definitely seen plenty of examples of hallucinations and totally agree with this idea of AI being a co pilot but not being the pilot. 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If you like to humans martec podcast graphics and you want your very own image we're doing a monthly raffle for a personalized t shirt designed by us enter to win at get census.com/humans I want to stick to this idea of of copilot you actually posted about Microsoft's Super Bowl copilot ad and I found it interesting because they're almost trying to position copilot like an everyday AI companion that's like they're trying to democratize AI tech, but most of us know it's funny that like they're pretty much a rip off of chat GPT like copilot has literally builds on top of GPT four. But the ad essentially shows like aI equipped teenagers who can now accomplish any creative task like a technical task like storyboarding a movie, or like writing code for a 3d open world game and there's like so much promise and excitement in the ad and it's like well produced and everything but the problem I have with the message that they are sending Microsoft is sending is it's like going against what you basically just talked about in your previous answer. They aren't saying learn this new skill and use AI as a tool and as an assistant to help you along your learning journey. Instead, they're basically saying learning is really hard. So use our AI tool to do things for you instead. I'm curious what your thoughts were on the Mauro 25:26 ABA that's that's a really interesting one. And and your point as well, I actually find funny enough at times that people would actually do not know that I compiled from Microsoft is built on churchy criteria. But this is my interesting take you have, I actually didn't have that tape. But I understand clearly how how that message picks them across this way. And it reminds me of maybe not too dissimilar. Windows XP, Microsoft back in the days I think was 2025. That was selling XP in a maybe a similar type of fashion. I see the ad a lot. Yeah, because he really taps along to emotional ripen means that these islands succeed, which are very common nowadays. With our generation and younger generation, right, this fast route to success. It's very glamorized. And I think the Dr. touch base on this in the way I think Microsoft is really showing this multimodal that you can do things I think is it's a very good way, at least the acquisition. And already just I focused on the, let's say, on the Share of Voice and the amount of investment that Microsoft is doing, to shout that we are here. And now you can use this. But what I think about this message, if I have to interpret the way that you just say that, I think that this could come with some caveats, right. And I think the users themselves will, would test it. And then they maybe will come into it too, maybe enough. So Johnny met, because if you eat he, if you go and just use the tools without having any basis, the results actually will not be those successful results that you expect. So I think that that's the real proof is when the crowded and then maybe that's the promise you're trying to be it's all down so well. So that would be fun. Like I actually saw it like as I said to you personally, I was focused more on the on the Showcase advertisement, the placement, and this because I haven't seen the company shopping sold out or investing so much I think I think there's couple of millions to invest on few seconds, a Superbowl right. And for you to shout, Jenny is here doing that, I think isn't very good enough. That position felt it's it makes a massive stampede the market. So if we think about the Macintosh 9090 84 commercial, that's as this is 1984 is not going to be like 1984. So you reminded me that okay, this is 2024, it's not going to be like 2000. So this is this is like a game changer. This technology is here. And we need to figure out how to best use it. Either. We like it. And I felt that that's why I felt Yeah, it wasn't. And that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. And actually just leak at one point. But actually data just can combine linking to the way that we work because a lot of companies use on Microsoft, and the accessibility or having these tools at the head of people just using Windows every day. It's NASA and the X and we'll have in our workspace in the way that we structure organizations, and it will work. Wow. It's still not very measured, but I feel there is a message. But I'll save that limb for later. But yeah, Jon Taylor 29:22 you know, I think I think you touched on some really interesting points there. And one of the kinds of sub themes that we've had with martec leaders who we've had conversations with Hasan on this podcast is around the adoption of these tools, like if you're on LinkedIn or anywhere, like it's really easy to find lots of cool ideas for prompts or social media posts to use AI. And I think that at a certain scale. It's kind of cool to play with. But then, you know, at least in my own consulting practice, I've seen that applying these and scaling the AI practices up it takes it's an art form. It's it's another skill set on its own. So I'm curious So in terms of your opinion, how do you recommend teams approach like the AI adoption use cases? How do we go from kind of what Phil was saying earlier? Like, hey, you can do anything with AI, like, welcome to the promised land. But in reality, there's there's use cases, practical applications, ways that this tool is going to either save time or grow revenue. So talk to us a little bit about the use cases, how you would approach this. Yeah, Mauro 30:25 so I was like this thought, and let's say from a perspective of what, in terms of AI adoption in a in a company, right, depending on the size of the company, but the framework that I have, should apply to avataq. First is really having an assessment to an audit, after maturity of the capabilities, the company has, let's say, the Moodle cache I have been using in terms of machine learning predictive models that we've been using for many years now. And then focusing in so when the new generative AI as well perspectives. So understanding that capability, the understanding of the entirety of the entire company, was using it for what purposes, personally professionally on mixing valves, because there are some companies who actually how to ban the use of those tools, right managerial to VI, because of a lot of data compliance, things have been which we understand not been tackled. So this is first understanding the capabilities how people understand that, then I would say, if we see there is a gap, let's start upscaling the knowledge. Because it's not about just utilizing the the tools itself, they detail purpose, like with any martec, right, it's an enabler, to achieve XYZ ad revenue, productivity, reduced costs here, and create the better customer satisfaction or deliver personalization at scale. So once we understand that a little bit, then we need to be very clear on what is the business goal, what are the challenges, and then think about from these technology? re not thinking about who's providing the technology, Microsoft, open AI, or whoever it might be. Just think about what models that could be applied to resolve certain of these issues, and really figure out and find out what are the designer welcomes from all they mentioned, really start with very quick and simple wins, for example, text, the text, right? Copywriting things, text to image in terms of ideation, very certain things that are available to everyone now free of charge. And then once those small use cases can we see that are working, it gives a signal that in terms of maturity, and adoption, people are ready to use that technology and not afraid of that technology, per se, and then build upon those use cases. And those weightings then you can break more complex use cases. But what I feel it's important, based on my experience so far, is that going back and said that this call to be the roles in in, in this in an org structure is creating a center of excellence for AI that really is responsible for three main things, right? One is inspiring the news of it, understanding that it will not replace you, if you use it properly, that people are using it and replace people and then it's rescuing or apps. And being sure that whatever we are doing, it delivers an outcome that is connected to to the company and the business outcome because otherwise, we are just trying tech for the for the novelty of it, which shouldn't be the case. Jon Taylor 34:07 I think I think this technology is fascinating. Like the one thing that I want to pull a little bit of a thread on is this idea of you know, the pace of change. You mentioned this earlier, like in martech. Humans don't love change. We're constantly kind of watching for change, but like aI comes with this. I'm gonna say this massive hype cycle, right, like, people are worried and afraid, probably legitimately that AI is gonna replace their job or may already be replacing jobs. But at the same time, we're still like, kind of having this mismatch between having lots of practical applications like you mentioned some roles earlier, like having like a director of AI on your marketing staff or somebody who's really like having spearheading this AI strategy in house. So one thing I've seen is a little bit of pushback, like in some of my social circles. I've seen it couple of posts recently where people are like, I don't know, there's almost rejection being force fed AI is like, Hey, I don't want to do AI. Like I liked it the way it was before I was comfy in bed. And there's a part of me that thinks, like, while you're gonna be really far behind, and then there's another part of me that just stakes takes a step back. And it's like, are we just a bunch of early adopters? Are we hyping up something? are we contributing to the problem? And I say this as a podcast co hosts. Now I'm reflecting on myself a little bit. Listeners beware. But like, when I go out into the real world, you know, and I talked to like, my personal trainer and stuff. I'm like, What do you think, attract GPT? He's like, John, what the heck are you talking about? So I'm curious about like, where are we in this this cycle? Like, are we the very tippy point? You know, the sharp point in the spirit of the early adopters? Or is this? Is this moving faster? Is this moving as fast as some of us think it is, in terms of replacing jobs? And that if you're not an early adopter, you're going to be a late adopter. Mauro 36:01 This is this is this is a very interesting question. Now, I definitely think at some point, the we are being forced to take this technology because of of such a high, right, there's massive hype, there is this fear. There is this fear. And this fear comes from the unknown of not understanding the technology, or not understanding how to apply the use cases, right? And where to start. And this idea that jobs are going to be disrupted. It really creates, I can say, maybe not a positive, emotional spat, when I know that now, I'm a novelist, and I can get the machine to write the novel very fast or cold, it becomes a bit of a threat. And in that sense, and then some people want to adopt it. Because most of the companies now want to is any as most of companies want to really drive all revenue companies that are for for profit, right? Not the not for profit, want to optimize, want to want to find the best way really to drive revenue. And this is really why this technology has been so high. From capitalism perspective, it drives a lot of dollars, see can change things and a time to think about the human being. So I actually have two views on this, I think, yes, we are early adopters, if we really scale and think about the whole world, like we really just go 300 feet high and down. We are early adopters of this technology, this technology is actually available, democratize freely for all of us to use, as long as we do have access to the internet, right. And I feel that we should as marketeers take advantage to use it. Although I have a second view, as if we fast forward 20 years from now, we know that as a fast speed of changing technology, there will be a case I envision that will be somewhere some will say I do not want to use those type of technologies to arrive to come to do revenue in my type of business. And I want to be as human specific human centric. So that would be maybe a revolution against the machine. They know the AI that we could, that we could foresee in many years, right. So but what I really want to, to say is that this is really something that we need to master, we'd need to to get to the evening, if we're not using a want to use it. We need to very close eyes to what this technology is doing. Because when I saw, for example, the announcements of Sora from open AI, I first just went and tried to find that one. How can I be Unfortunately, I couldn't imagine things like Pac, it's game changing, but you will not 100% replace humans, there'll be a change of of roles, like when the typewriter came in. And now we have the computers these people used to type now all of us are typewriters. Right, because all of us time. So this is our time to see that change of technology adoption. But yes, I feel that we have been forced in some ways and how I live by be curious, going back and curiosity. And I think in our realm, we want to be curious and understand everything that is happening and how can we apply it? So I think we are actually also The cause of this, because we are not saying now we actually say I want more. Yes. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, Philippe Gamache 40:09 I like the double perspective there and kind of balancing your use of vote on on the how you're seeing this. But yeah, I, my perspective is I think that, I don't know if there's like a hype problem per se, like in any new tech changes, there's going to be people that are going to be adopters early on, and big fans of it, and proponents of it. And we're seeing way too much noise already for that, like all these like, AI tool newsletters, and like, if you're not using AI, you're being left behind type like hype hype, hype cycle, folks, right. But there's also like John said, like a lot of folks that are just like, I am not anti AI, but like, everyone is worried about it replacing jobs and look at this crappy output based on like, this thing that I was trying to get it to do. But on the topic of it, like replacing jobs like it's, it's funny, like John and I had a deep episode on this last summer, where we are like talking about what are some of the roles in marketing that are potentially better suited to be future proofed? For like Gen AI specifically. And we had like product marketing in mind where like community marketing roles, and we're talking about like future roles and stuff like that, but obviously, like content is the one that like we keep coming back to. And like, it's the easiest answer of like, how can you leverage GPT internally hayleigh, you can just write a bunch of content for it. But I think that it's like it's overplayed a little bit. But marketers that I trust, like I was listening to another podcast this morning. And he was saying, essentially, like, if he had to go back, and like start a company from scratch today, and he was focusing on building like an inbound presence, like you would still do the same like keyword approach, or you'd pick like the main keywords for his product. But like, back in the day, like 510 years ago, you would hire a bunch of writers once you start ranking for some of these keyword terms. And like you just like scale that as you like scale traffic. But today, there's potentially way more efficiencies and doing that. And instead of hiring a bunch of content writers, you hire a few editors that are editing Chad GBT content and maybe more like informational, like top of funnel content. But yeah, it's it's an interesting time to be in marketing, for sure. And yeah, I know that, like you talked a bit about this idea of earlier on in the show that like martec, folks are poised to be these like aI strategist roles internally, and they might actually be well suited to lead this AI adoption in Mar tech. But I'm curious, your take on this, like, Why do you think our tech folks or marketing operation folks are best suited internally to be the stewards of Gen AI and new AI tools? Mauro 43:08 Yes, my view on this is really, from my perspective, that right is the fashion is within marketing ops and market, we really understand a couple of things that I think it's very important to drive the technology, once we understand technology itself, how to implement already successfully working with the business arts and the technical sides. So really, I think, within marketing, you have to be really good and martech to navigate the business marketing side. And so the technology absolutely kind of the hot the hot spot, the nice swapping, but so that already poises in it puts in a position to do that. And we almost have the idea of the being customer centric, to drive best experiences whilst driving revenue. And I think this is what this AI technology has been doing. And January is awesome. So I wouldn't say that it's already a perfect fit. In light of some problem. Can we see conversations online or articles bit position? That AI is a very technical perspective? Yes, it's technical, we need to understand that all of the algebra is always inside the technicalities in the maps to do it. But from a business perspective on how to run it and try driving, we do not need to really be I don't need to be a data scientist to run it. So we need to really look at those tools from a business operational process on how we can use the applications in Pro. And I think that's why I say the MAR tech guys marketing apps are best suited for that because that's already why we are doing force. We need to partner with everyone in a company for processing like this, which company to adopt to access every single person in the company, every single function needs to be part of that transformation. Otherwise, it's really difficult because we talking about, I think that what you've just mentioned is the content velocity or the content supply chain is quickly. Because we want more content, the customers want more content, it needs to be personalized, it needs to be in real time at scale. So AI can't and feed that gap, right, writing the copy, designing new things, automation, personalization, one to one. Recommendation, next best offer. So all of these things we keep in mind Ethan will be micropayments isn't green and receive a free 60 view. But it's to me today human behind to look at this thing. But once we take these beyond that realm will mark things out side, and we'll talking about employee engagement. The hours spent during x one set on the HR process on the hiring process. So really be an AI first type of company like before where we used to be digital files, companies, the whole perspective is that this will actually change everything. For example. You are working, have you made it you have your notes. And you could have the way I'm saying to you like a co pilot can say you had a lot of good things today. You gotta stop going to take your time. How do you cater for those co pilot assistants that's helping small on your workplace on the I like to call it the life work balance instead of the work life balance, right? Because we live in sweats. And you mix it all of this right? So I think having a clear vision shadier alignment with older units, this is what is going to create a really disruptive youth with an application of AI. Otherwise, it will be kind of how can I call it I don't want to call it a one trick pony. Because it's not because we've got multimodal slavery things. But it needs to be reintegrated into DNA. And it's not about the tool itself. Right? I think there's a shift in mindset of growth mindset utilizing them. There's no point to be forced to do something. Understanding your mind as it's like agility. We talked about our jalala and you're going to follow this preacher, you're going to follow the the all the ceremonies, but it's a mindset. It's not a structure, per se, you had to have this monitor, now have these signs of improvement, you have the mindset of curiosity. So it's a bit of a long answer, but I think this is really will help who is leading our attack. And I think we as I think most of our listeners, your listeners today, we at the right place to meet that. Jon Taylor 48:04 So I want to throw a little bit of a curveball. And I know we're near we're running up to the end of the episode in terms of time, but like i in terms of who leads the adoption of Mart, AI and Mar tech and and marketing, like one of the thoughts that has been kind of sneaking into my head. And we've talked to a lot of marketing operations and more tech leaders. And we've talked a lot about them being the stewards of AI and so on. But if I'm applying it to, and I work with smaller companies as a consultant, and I'm a solo consultant myself, like one of the things that keeps coming up in my head is like the tendency of marketing operations and Mar tech is to put process in place is to strategize understand the lay of the land to plan. But my own experience with with AI and Gen AI has been very grassroots like, I don't know what I know until I'm doing it like there's there is a freeform radical, creative expression that happens. And I'm finding that at least in the organizations that I work with, where there's like this almost top down approach to AI, it becomes harder to come up with the use cases versus like, there's almost a necessity to experiment and to try things that you haven't done before. And I just was one really quick example myself, like, I'm terrible at image design. Like I've never done any graphic design in my life. And since we've done this episode with Phil, last year on on mid journey, I have generated 1000s of images. I'm now using AI to do video generation and I'm like untapping a creative part of my brain that I'd never do and it's having huge benefits for me. So I'm just curious, like how do we how do we as martec leaders because I think you're right, by the way that like it is much more organized approach is needed, particularly for larger organizations. But there's a spirit of innovation that like free radical mad scientists like myself will I think they need to be enabled to play in the labs a little bit. So I'm just curious your perspective there. Mauro 49:58 I can be a Korean. And actually, by the way, I really enjoy the the, I say the brand identity of your business martec. Right, I think that I call the brand identity super good. Well, well appreciate. And I feel this is exactly what he should be doing. amplifying our skills, and helping us develop our human creativity, right, because it's taking away some of the mundane tasks. So we can focus on some things we can read that drive filing, yeah, with that technology, I fully agree with you in the sense of this does not need to be top down, right? This can be bottom up. And I think really to drive change, it needs to be bound. People will come with multiple use cases, as small as they might be, we'd need to try, we need to see what's the aspect, it might not actually be 100%, about marketing, it could be about employee satisfaction, it could be about even improving when the next meal is going to be delivered the drinks. Even people have a right. But it will give it will give the overall chance for people in the company to be part of this innovation. Imagine the work. I'm trying to find a function that we might have find that it's not too creative, because I actually think everything is very creative. Philippe Gamache 51:44 Okay, let me choose tried to find out accounting, accounting or finance, accounting or finance, actually are Mauro 51:51 quite, it's quite creative. What's the accounting got this numbers, lady, someone was come up with something really, really good and say, okay, when we doing our contracting and managing things, and these types of event that we need to understand behaviors or likelihood, when or what's the best factors we can do to pass the closing a contract, right, from a contractual perspective. And maybe we might not even think about this. But this could be something that is going to be selling Blackboard for that, for that department. If we just focus on specific use cases to drive this revenue. We will forget a lot of times that we forget that the best capital company has it's actually the human intellect, the human resources that so then that capital itself should be given that technology to play with, exercise those muscles and come back, but it isn't the one and before and after at least maybe the winning formula. And it needs to be grassroot. I totally agree with you that at Philippe Gamache 52:58 great Dr. Morrow, this has been a super fun conversation. appreciate you letting us go over a little bit. Overtime here. I know it's late for you. One last question for you. We ask this to all of our guests. You're a pandemic dad or well traveled director of martec panelist to Speaker you're also a big dystopian sci fi guy. We asked this to everyone because I'm curious like your your perspective on this. You already talked about life work balance versus work life balance. How do you remain happy and successful in your career? And how do you find that balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy? Mauro 53:35 Oh, that that's really cool. If a question really goes close to home, as I said, right, my my view is and why for balance, not work life balance. If things is really making, making time for the family, making time for my family, my friends, I actually have maybe, maybe a small ritual like family, it's like listening to music very often dancing with my wife. So creating small moments of happiness to helps you break out that routine from from the day to day basis. And something also very, that weren't exactly wanting to do, let's say some of personal preferences. Although I enjoy a lot of social outings. I also enjoy free time or time to recharge, even on going on walks, reading, writing. It's something I find really refreshing that I can then I can recharge on my own. And then really, going back to the type of what we're talking about curiosity is really finding out new ideas that could be completely outside of my realm knowledge That just makes me I can I say, disconnect. So this is really why I like sci fi, dystopian reality because it's like stuff happening here. It's that I can see it that then I can come back. And that's really a cool environment and at times thinking of life as a even my gaming experiencing a time. So if you think live and you tried to see that you are a game producer. And we are all character will write out a storyline that can be quite fun, right? So it's this kind of helps out. When you're facing those dreadful days situations that might not be so nice, you really damaged and it's part of a cycle. I'm in level one that I'm going to have which level I need to defeat that one still known after that, yeah, that that's really quite valid. And this helps you to keep up a healthy positive mental attitude. And I think we perform best when we are happy and then that that leads to success. And just being ready. Another thing is really be kind to people really being nice Kalin can do that helps for happiness and building relationships with Shawn will will just propagate and drive success and Philippe Gamache 56:25 love it. Love that answer. But I really appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, I definitely see a lot of parallels and the Sci Fi stuff. But yeah, love your answer about thinking of our lives as a game a little bit stepping back. And you know what, maybe we are all in a simulation. So maybe it actually is. We don't know. Thank you so much for your time and really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Mauro 56:47 No, thank you both. It's a It's definitely been a pleasure. Today, yeah. Philippe Gamache 57:03 Hey, folks, thanks for checking out the episode today. We're having a lot of fun this season really appreciate you listening in. We've recently started dabbling in video and posing full episodes on YouTube. So if you're curious to see our radio faces, check out our brand new YouTube channel. And if you haven't done so, already, the best way to support the show is to sign up for our weekly newsletter where we notify you every Tuesday morning when a new episode drops. But the newsletter also includes our favorite takeaways from our conversation. So if you're in a hurry, and you're not sure if you have time to listen to that episode, the newsletter will catch you up on the most important practical takeaways. And that's it for today. We've got some exciting announcements coming up next week. So stay tuned for that. But thank you again for listening really appreciate you.